Given the events of the past several weeks, I have been giving a lot of thought in how to make our work at the XChange more useful to the most number of people and to expand our work in preparation for the struggles ahead. Last night, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviewed Michael Moore and I am convinced that he is right: this is our moment — it’s time to get up off the couch. I didn’t take Moore’s statement to mean that “we” have the advantage, or that the “momentum is with us.” Rather, I heard him saying that we have a choice to make. If we don’t stand up and resist now, we might as well give up the game. Moore was right: This is a class war.

As readers of the XChange know, I’ve linked this blog to our facebook page and our twitter account. However, despite some very useful integration tools, not all posts appear in all places all of the time. For example, when I post a link to an article on twitter, it does not get posted directly to the main page of this blog — it gets posted to the twitter feed on the side bar. That is useful, however, it does not provide the easiest access to all the information for people who do not use twitter. By the same token, it would be both too labor intensive to post all the links to the blog.

To resolve the twitter issue, I was turned on to a little service called paper.li by the twitterers over at New Faculty Majority [@NewFacultyMajority]. Paper.li turns all the t weets from a particular account into a daily or weekly “Newspaper” of sorts. It displays each tweet as an article and provides easy access to links and media posted to our @kuxchange twitter account. I’ve created The KU XChange Daily, published every morning at 8am, for those who would like access to the info from @kuxchange but don’t want a twitter account. A nice feature of The KU XChange Daily is that you can subscribe and receive an email each morning notifying you that the latest edition is available [you’ll see the subscription button on the right-hand side under the KU XChange stats boxes].

Thanks to an amazing blogger from Wisconsin that I’ve connected with over the past few weeks, blue cheddar, I have been experimenting with an on-line radio station through BlogTalkRadio after listening to blue cheddar’s daily radio show, Solidarity Wisconsin. I hope to launch either a similar show or a weekly podcast over the next couple of weeks.

I am also exploring ways to raise money through the XChange to support protests across the county. I was able to send $50 for fruit and vegetables to the protesters in Wisconsin…I would like to do so much more. As some of you know, I have a zazzle.com site with t-shirts, bumper-stickers, and a bunch of other stuff. ALL earnings from that site will go to directly support protesters. You can also shop amazon.com through this link, and amazon.com will donate about 7% of your purchase to our efforts on the XChange. Amazon will not charge you anything extra and you can gain a little comfort in knowing that some of your purchase will go to help support protesters fighting for public education, collective bargaining, and workers’ rights. I will also be adding some additional ways that you can provide support.

As we inch closer to the beginning of the fall 2010 semester, I wanted to remind all you XChange readers (fans and detractors alike!) that the best way to follow the XChange is by subscribing. You can do so by entering your email address in the “Subscribe” box on the right sidebar. Better yet, it’s free. If you subscribe, you will received each new XChange post in your email inbox. You can even comment and reply right from your email.

As we move into negotiations, I’ll be posting updates, analysis, background, documents, etc. related to our contract negotiations. The XChange is also up and running on Twitter, @kuxchange. Check it out and follow along. And KU XChange is still going strong on facebook. Take your pick. 🙂